Small Collections Grant
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A new home for the Carrizo Mountain Herbarium: a unique collection
Navajo Nation, United States
Other
Cost (USD):
3000
CMH
(on behalf of) Carrizo Mountain Herbarium
Objective:
Carrizo Mountain Herbarium (CMH) is an indigenous run herbarium of ~35,000 specimens located in Beclabito, New Mexico, established in 1995 by indigenous Dine botanist Dr. Arnold Clifford. In Spring of 2025, following a year of record snowfall, the roof of the Carrizo Mountain Herbarium partially caved in, exposing the 21 cabinets to outside weather. Clifford reached out to colleagues for help with funding for a new collections space. The purpose of this proposal is to help fund an affordable, long-term storage and office space for this invaluable collection on Navajo land.
Timetable:
A new home for the collection is urgently needed. The rented storage unit is not insulated and can reach up to 40° C in summer and below -14° C in winter, making the environment incredibly unsupportive of the collections. Exposure to pests is also high in the current storage environment. Furthermore, the monthly rental fee on the container of $301 is financially unsustainable, and CMH is already behind on paying this rental fee by multiple months, accruing late fees. The plan is to purchase the prefabricated structure and have it delivered and setup as soon as possible, and hopefully before the winter of 2026/2027.
Scoring Rubric
Reviewer's name:
Collection Improvement (max. 120 points)
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Facilitating access to the physical collections by digitization (e.g., data entry, setting up database structure with an outline of the platform to be used, purchasing equipment, and imaging specimens) – up to 30 points.
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Enhancing physical collections by improving the conservation status of specimens in the herbarium (e.g., better folders, protecting covers, mounting paper, labeling, etc.) – up to 30 points.
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Curating specimens (e.g., updating families, species identification, identifying types) – up to 20 points.
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Increasing our understanding of the flora or funga by making new herbarium specimens available, such as processing of backlog or collecting and mounting of new specimens from understudied sites – up to 20 points.
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Securing collections by distribution of duplicates (or orphan collections) to other regional or international herbaria or shipping endangered collections to another herbarium – up to 20 points.
This proposal scores:
/120
Methods & Funding (max. 40 points)
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Match between the proposed budget and methods for the aims described – up to 10 points.
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Perceived need, the extent to which the project will benefit from IAPT funding: e.g., due to active floristic work or contribution to poorly collected sites, due to threatened conditions of collections, and for the degree of involvement of others (outreach and education). We give more points for herbaria in low- and middle-income countries – up to 20 points.
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Sharing duplicate specimens with other herbaria – up to 10 points.
This proposal scores:
/40
Broader Impacts (max. 40 points)
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Degree of regional importance of the collection or the taxonomic importance of the targeted collection – up to 10 points.
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The project will yield durable benefits (specimens, digitized metadata, databases, websites) – up to 15 points.
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The project involves outreach/mentoring and broad dissemination – up to 15 points.
This proposal scores:
/40
0
Year of last successful SCG application:
Has applicant applied for SCG before?:
No
Plan:
After the collapse of the roof of the CMH herbarium, a social media campaign garnered support of Clifford’s many students and admirers and $2,800 was raised to transfer the entire collection into a rented 8 x 40 foot shipping container for temporary storage. The current rental storage space is not climate controlled and has no windows, and it requires a $300 monthly payment. We propose to provide a permanent home for the collection through the purchase a prefabricated office and storage space that will be delivered to the site of the collection for a price of approximately $16,500. In the long term, this prefabricated structure will ease the burden of a monthly rental payment and allow for larger fundraising efforts towards building up the Carrizo Mountain herbarium and extending its outreach capacity to the community. The American Society of Plant Taxonomists (ASPT) has already awarded $12,600 towards the purchase of a prefabricated structure for CMH from its herbarium emergency fund and is actively seeking additional funds from other societies. Additional funds are needed to pay for the transportation of the new prefabricated structure from Albuquerque, NM to Beclabito, and to provide the services and setup needed to get the new structure up and running. Our proposal to IAPT seeks to make up the current gap in funding, so that plans can proceed to secure this unique collection.
Institution:
IH Code:
Country:
Target areas:
Applicant First Name/s:
email:
providing a secure new location for a collection in need
"Other" target:
Isaac
Lichter Marck
Applicant Last Name/s: